Place:Wotton under Edge, Gloucestershire, England

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Wotton under Edge is a market town within the Stroud District of Gloucestershire, England. Located near the southern end of the Cotswolds, the Cotswold Way long-distance footpath passes through the town. Standing on the B4058 Wotton is about 5 miles (8.0 km) from the M5 motorway. Its population stood at 5,574 in the 2001 UK Census. The parish includes the hamlets of Coombe and Wortley (redirected here).

History

Kingswood Abbey was founded in 1139, but all that remains is a 16th-century Cistercian gatehouse. Nearby historical buildings include the Tudor houses of Newark Park and Owlpen Manor.

St. Mary the Virgin was consecrated in 1283, and is the oldest and largest church in the town.

New Mills, an industry founded in 1810, prospered by supplying woollen cloth for uniforms to both the English and the French during the latter half of the Napoleonic wars. After a century of decline the mill was near to closing in 1981 when it was acquired by an engineering company specialising in industrial metrology and spectroscopy.

A 19th century description

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Wotton-under-Edge from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"WOTTON-UNDER-EDGE, a small town, a parish, and a [registration] sub-district, in Dursley [registration] district, Gloucester. The town stands under the Cotswolds, 2½ miles ENE of Charfield [railway] station, and 4 S of Dursley; occupied anciently a site in the rear of the present one, and was destroyed there by fire in the time of King John; was rebuilt on its present site, by the Berkeleys; was held by the royalists, in the civil wars of Charles I.; is governed nominally by a mayor, annually chosen at a court leet; is a seat of petty-sessions, and a polling place; carried on once a considerable woollen manufacture, now nearly extinct; and has a head post-office, a telegraph office, a banking office, two chief inns, a literary institution with library and reading room, a handsome church with pinnacled tower, three dissenting chapels, a recently reconstructed tabernacle, originally built in 1775 by Rowland Hill, endowed grammar and blue-coat schools with £377 a year, national and British schools, five suites of alms houses with aggregately £671, other charities £81, a weekly market on Friday, a monthly market on the first Tuesday of the month, and fairs on the Tuesday before 25 March and on 25 Sept.

"The parish includes six hamlets, and comprises 4,880 acres. Real property: £14,471; of which £127 are in gasworks. Population: in 1851, 4,224; in 1861: 3,673. Houses: 937. There are numerous good residences. Traces exist of Roman and British camps. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol. Value: £112. Patron: Christchurch, Oxford.

"The [registration] sub-district contains three parishes. Acres: 10,475. Population: 5,754. Houses: 1,451."

Registration Districts

• Dursley Registration District (1837 - 1937)
• Stroud Registration District (1937 - 2006)
• Gloucestershire Registration District (2006 - )

Links of interest

• Wotton under Edge Official Town Website - includes map of the town and town guide
• Wotton under Edge 1889 Map (dead link)
• Wotton under Edge Heritage Centre - tourist information point and home of the Wotton under Edge Historical Society

Research Tips

• Gloucestershire Archives in Gloucester is where paper and microfilm copies of all records for this part of Gloucestershire are stored.

Online sources which may also be helpful:

• GENUKI gives pointers to other archive sources as well as providing some details on each parish in the county. The emphasis here is on ecclesiastical parishes (useful before 1837)
• A listing of all the Registration Districts in England and Wales since their introduction in 1837 and tables of the parishes that were part of each district and the time period covered with detailed notes on changes of parish name, mergers, etc. Do respect the copyright on this material.
• The FamilySearch Wiki for Gloucestershire provides a similar but not identical series of webpages to that provided by GENUKI
• A Vision of Britain through Time has a group of pages of statistical facts for almost every parish in the county
• Unfortunately, A History of the County of Gloucester in the Victoria County History series provided by the website British History Online does not cover this part of the county
• Ancestry.co.uk has recently added Gloucestershire Burials, 1813-1988; Confirmations, 1834-1913; Baptisms, 1813-1913; Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1813; and Marriages and Banns, 1754-1938. (entry dated 1 Aug 2015)